1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to browsing web pages on a wireless terminal and more particularly to loading at least one data element from a web page to the wireless terminal.
2. Brief Description of Related Developments
The Internet offers its users diversified and easily accessible information and entertainment that the user may browse in accordance with his/her preferences. Typically, a computer is used for browsing web pages, but browsing that takes place on wireless terminals, such as mobile stations, is becoming more and more popular, since packet-switched mobile networks, such as 2.5 G and 3 G networks, presently prepare the way for fast network connections with short latent periods. In addition, the high-resolution colour displays, the high capacity flash memories and the versatile operating characteristics of the mobile stations allow presenting the web pages on the mobile stations in a more versatile fashion than before.
In accordance with the prior art, digital data included in the web pages is loaded from a server into a memory of the wireless terminal over a data link, typically because the user of the terminal selects the web page in question. Depending on the data link rate and the terminal load, it may, however, be time-consuming to load the data in the web page into the terminal, and therefore opening the web page on the terminal may be very slow. It should also be noted that loading data is generally expensive. Another problem is that several terminals, such as mobile stations, typically encounter problems when feeding long web site addresses, especially owing to the size of the keyboard and the placing of the characters.
In the solutions known from publications U.S. Ser. No. 2002/0 143 896 and WO 00/55 769, data is loaded from the network into the terminal before the user selects the web page to be opened. However, the problem with the solutions presented in these publications is that data is loaded irrespective of the data transmission rate. Consequently, loading is slow when a slow data transmission connection is used for loading data and therefore expensive for the user of the terminal. What is assumed in the solution presented in publication WO 00/55 769 is that a personal profile is created. The profile may comprise for instance the user's name, age, sex and information about hobbies, on the basis of which the selection of data to be loaded into the terminal is selected. However, what becomes a problem in such a case is that the terminal is provided with a lot of data that the user hardly requires. Loading such useless data, however, loads for instance the memory capacity and the bandwidth excessively and therefore most likely makes the loading of the required data into the terminal more difficult.